Veteran Spotlight
James Willard Higgins Jr.
KIA Al Anbar
James W. Higgins Jr., 22, of Thurmont, was born on June 2, 1984, in Olney, Montgomery County, to parents James Willard Higgins, Sr. and Deborah Sue Higgins.
Higgins graduated from Catoctin High School in 2003. According to the June 1, 2013, edition of The Frederick News-Post, he played football for four years in high school and played football and baseball with the Catoctin Youth Association.
According to Higgins’ obituary, he was named most improved football player over those years, and he received the Catoctin High School Football Team Bronze Club Award in 2001 and the Dr. Henry Leonard McCorkle Award during the 2001-02 and 2002-03 seasons.
In an article published in the November 1, 2006 edition of The Cumberland News-Times, the newspaper reported that Higgins also enjoyed his PlayStation games, was an avid Frank Sinatra fan, and had also attended classes at the community college (the name of the college was not specified).
The Frederick News-Post further noted that Higgins “was active in the Civil Air Patrol when he was younger, and won a few awards from the group,” and in 2002, he had received a certificate of First Solo Flight and had completed the Private Flight Program, as well.
According to an obituary published in the August 2, 2006, edition of the Lancaster New Era, Higgins had joined the Marine Corps in April 2005, and trained at Camp Pendleton, California, where he had been qualified as a machine gunner and a rifle sharpshooter.
Also at Camp Pendleton, he had been assigned to the Weapons Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, and had achieved the rank of lance corporal. The Weapons Company provides fire support and close-combat capabilities, using heavier weapons systems.
Higgins was subsequently deployed to Iraq in January of 2006, in conjunction with Operation Iraqi Freedom, an operation launched by the United States Armed Forces, along with its allies, in the attempt to locate weapons of mass destruction, and to end Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime.
On July 27, 2006, Higgins, at the age of 22, was fatally shot in the chest while engaged in battle with the enemy in the Al Anbar Province in Iraq.
The bullet had “clipped the right atrium of his heart in two places,” according to an article published in the November 1, 2006, edition of The Cumberland News-Times, which attributed to another news agency as having been the source of the information. Efforts made by military surgeons had unfortunately failed to save his life.
Sadly, he died “just a week before he was scheduled to leave Iraq and a month before he was scheduled to fly back to Baltimore,” according to The Frederick News-Post on June 1, 2013.
Higgins was buried on August 4, 2006, with full military honors at the Resthaven Memorial Gardens in Frederick, in the cemetery’s Veterans Garden of Heroes-II.
As a result of his war record and injury, Higgins ultimately received the National Defense Service Medal, the Iraq Campaign Medal, the Sea Service Deployment Medal, the Combat Action Medal, and the Purple Heart.
However, his death was far from being in vain. The Frederick News-Post reported in their July 12, 2007, edition that Higgins had asked his mother during the course of his last phone call home before his death, that “if he didn’t make it back from Iraq, he didn’t (want) 60 years to pass before his fellow servicemen were acknowledged,” apparently in reference to the decades that it took to establish the National World War II Memorial.
As a result of her son’s request, his mother, Deborah Higgins, launched an effort commencing during the first-half of 2007 to create a National Fallen Heroes Memorial to honor “those who’ve died in over 30 conflicts since 1975,” according to an article published in the January 2, 2008, edition of The Frederick News-Post.
Deborah Higgins passed away on December 25, 2019. Her National Fallen Heroes Memorial website is no longer accessible.
